The seventh conference of the "Russian-German Library Dialogue" was successfully held in Kaliningrad. Representatives from the largest libraries and museums of Russia and Germany took part in it. “The German-Russian Library Dialogue” is organized under the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the All-Russian State Library of Foreign Literature named after M.I. Rudomino, and the State Library in Berlin - the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. This year, the conference was supported by the Russian Military Historical Society.

"The Russian-German Library Dialogue" is an informal association of libraries in Russia and Germany, designed to ensure the restoration of historical book collections illegally exported during the Great Patriotic War. This year one of the most significant results of this initiative was the return of seven valuable XVIII-XIX centuries books to their homeland. The books were handed over to the director of the Novgorod State Museum-Reserve - Natalya Grigorieva - by the director of the State Library of Berlin and head of the library of the German Historical Center in Berlin. This event once again became an example of the goodwill and active position of the cultural community of Russia and Germany, which continues to cooperate regardless to the negative political surrounding.

Representatives from Germany, who took part in the German-Russian library dialogue in Kaliningrad, commented, “we feel responsible for the fact that cultural monuments were taken from Russian museums and libraries, and now we return them home. On the pages there are stamps, which tell us about the cities where these cultural values were located”.

General Director of the All-Russian State Library for Foreign Literature named after M.I. Rudomino,  the сo-сhairman of the forum -Vadim Duda - on behalf of the library and museum community, thanked his German colleagues for preserving these unique books and donating them to Russia without compensation.

"It is important that the dialogue became not only a platform for discussing very difficult issues related to displaced values but also a platform for the practical implementation of projects dedicated to the books return to Russia, the virtual re-creation of collections, a meeting place for the acquaintance with future partners,” said Vadim Duda.

The results of the conference are the agreements on new major projects of the virtual reunification and reconstruction of historical collections, such as the collection of Gerhard Klemm and the collection of musical notation of the Saxon Library, which are stored in the Russian State Library and the Glinka Museum, the collections of the Gothic Library from INION funds and other major collections of global significance.

Reference

The "German-Russian Library Dialogue" was founded in 2009 under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation, the Cultural Foundation of Lands (Germany) and the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation (Germany). It is a constantly acting professional platform, uniting the efforts of the two countries in the search for, identification, preservation, restoration, and introduction into scientific circulation of information on book funds connected with the tragic pages of history.

Reference about the activities of The Russian Military Historical Society